NEA supports gays while Baptist bigots protest

The approved recommendations, which were delivered briefly in an Executive Committee report and did not require a vote of the assembly, call for the NEA to lobby for hate crimes legislation, boost the NEA website to "include all resources" devoted to homosexual causes, and push for sexual orientation training to be a requirement for earning a teaching credential. Andy Linebaugh, director of public relations for the NEA, told Baptist Press July 20 that he was unaware of the three recommendations on homosexuality adopted by the Executive Committee and offered no comments on the matter. Jeralee Smith, a California teacher and founder of the NEA Ex-Gay Educators Caucus, told Baptist Press the latest developments remind her of the way leaders pushed their agenda through a few years ago, despite opposition. "This is kind of the same thing that happened in 2001 when Dr. [James] Dobson called for a protest rally in front of the NEA convention in Los Angeles," Smith said. "When somebody tried to propose NEA policy on the Representative Assembly floor that would basically promote gay-lesbian curriculum, there were a whole bunch of states that were against it," Smith recounted. "... What happened then was they referred everything to committee, and the next year in the registration packet of the delegates was a 60-page sexual orientation document that was adopted by the Executive Committee. The Representative Assembly had nothing to say about it."